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Sunday, August 15, 2010

When Date Night Ends Badly. Really badly.

The last time I had a date that ended with me vomiting out a car window, I was in college. My date had just pulled up to my dorm and I opened the passenger side door and puked in the circle drive.

Believe it or not, he asked me out again.

Six years into stayin' married, David and I usually don't have dates that end in blind drunkeness (at least, not so much since the whole pregnancy thing happened). Our last "date night" consisted of take out Chinese food and a True Blood DVD. So we decided that after the busy back-to-school week we had both had (10-hour work days for him, syllabus planning, meetings, and "working" lunches for me) that we would actually go out on Saturday night.

It turned out that one of the teachers David works with at his new school also sings at a bar a couple of nights a week and had invited him to come out to her show on Saturday. She performs with a guy who plays the keyboard and they mostly play popular karaoke-ish songs. I am no music snob, and I happen to be perfectly delighted to sit at a bar and listen to people sing Bonnie Rait and Frank Sinatra songs, so this suited me just fine. We decided to grab dinner before the show and we invited Jamie and Max to come with us.

Dinner was at Dewey's--one of our favorite pizza places. I made the mistake of texting in the car on the way there (while David drove) and felt a little carsick when we got there. I was actually thankful for the 35 minute wait for our table. My stomach settled while Jamie and I talked baby showers and baby sitters and all things baby and by the time we sat down and ordered, I was starving.

David and I split a house salad and a Green Lantern pizza (red sauce, mozzarella, pesto, goat cheese, spinach, and artichoke hearts). It was delicious. And I was hungry. So while we all talked more baby stuff and family stuff and recent movies (why do I have no desire to see Inception when everyone says it's great?), I devoured half a salad and four pieces of pizza.

Four.

Generous slices.

Garlicky, pesto-infused, cheese-covered slices of deliciousness.

And I had an O'Douls.

Then, feeling stuffed, we headed to the bar. I had to walk slowly because I felt so full. But the bar was fun. The teacher who works with David has a great voice (she's the PE teacher and practices her songs by playing the CDs and singing along in class, which I think is awesome). So the entertainment was fun and the bar had a total Cheers feel, with the singers pausing their choruses to greet regulars as they walked in, and middle-age people mingling and dancing. The entertainment shifted from singing to karaoke (one good singer, one painful performance), to a DJ dance mix, then back to the singing. We met another teacher who works with David and both the teachers were very sweet and complimentary about what a great asset he is to their building and what a good job he's done at their meetings and how much everyone likes him and how positive he is.

Even though I was having a good time, my very full stomach started to bother me a little bit. It wasn't consistent and it didn't feel like I had to run for the bathroom or anything. Since the baby seems to be taking up more room down there, I feel like I'm now more aware of tummy rumblings that are just regular digestive stuff. So I tried to ignore it but I definitely didn't feel like dancing.

After Max and Jamie left, David and I chatted with the singers and the other teacher, but I was feeling increasingly... weird. David kept saying "We can leave if you want to," but I hated to cut out early when everyone was so nice and I wanted to stay and enjoy myself. Plus, I didn't feel sick to my stomach, exactly. I just felt like the pizza I'd eaten was sitting up high in my throat and I could still taste it in a not-very-pleasant way.

Finally, though, I got a wave of nausea that made me break out in goosebumps. In spite of the gum I was chewing, all I could taste was the garlic from the pizza. So we headed home.

Getting in the car seemed to make things worse. As we moved from the air conditioned bar to the steamy parking lot and into a hot car (that smelled like leftover pizza), I felt even worse. I had the air conditioning blasting in my face and then suddenly I was freezing cold. We got on the highway and maybe it was being in a moving vehicle, but I had never felt so miserable. I kept moaning and groaning and David was like, "Are you ok?" I replied, "No! Just get me home. I have to get home."

About three miles from our exit, I suddenly realized I wasn't going to make it. David asked if he needed to pull over. I said, "No! Get me home!" only to shout in the next breath, "Pull over! Pull over!" I was frantically trying to roll down the window but they were still locked from when Cooper was in the backseat last weekend (he can roll down the windows by stepping on the armrests so we'd put on the child locks).

"Unlock the window! Roll down this window!" I was saying over and over again as David tried to cross three lanes of traffic to exit or pull over on the shoulder. I could hear him messing with the buttons on his side of the car, but the window didn't unlock. I began pounding on the window controls, then pounding on the actual window, and then I screamed, "JESUS CHRIST ROLL DOWN THIS WINDOW!"

Evidently Jesus Christ obliged, because David managed to get the child lock off as we hit the exit ramp. I rolled down my window, flung my head outside, and as the hot summer air whipped my hair across my face and we began slowing to a stop at the light, I vomited pizza out the window and all the way down the side of our car.

It is possible that I also hit the car behind us as we were still going at a pretty good clip when I first started barfing.

We came to a stop at the light and I continued retching and puking out the window like a frat boy.

David was like, "Are you ok? Do you want me to stop somewhere?" and in between puking (and crying, of course, because puking always makes me cry, and puking out the car window while sober is no exception), I kept saying, "No! Get me home! I have to get to my house!"

Of course, now we were off the highway and taking what felt like the longest, windiest route possible to get back home. After five or six heavy pukes, I was pretty well done, although I kept the window rolled down just in case. I could see in the passenger rear-view that the side of the car, including the passenger door handle and the back window on the passenger side, was covered in vomit.

I felt better after barfing, honestly, but the indignity and horror of the entire situation still had me totally miserable. That didn't stop me from asking David in my most pitiful voice if he would come around and open my door for me when we pulled up to house. He quickly agreed, eager to do whatever he could to make me feel better, and I have to admit that the look on his face when he realized that the door handle on my side was covered in puke did make me laugh in spite of everything.

So I let myself out of the car and went inside and washed my face and brushed my teeth and also rinsed some of the puke out of my hair in the sink (it really was just like old times in college...) while David busted out the garden hose to rinse my barf of the side of the car.

Basically, I can't believe any of that happened.

Obviously Baby Duck is not a huge fan of garlicky pizza.

Hopefully it will be a minimum of another ten years or so before I barf out a car window again.

1 comment:

Not in a car, but totally been there done that. I threw up green beans slathered in Ranch Dressing once in the kitchen sink because I couldn't hop over the baby gate in time. (That was a craving, not a normal snack choice).

LOVE that you asked your husband to open your door for you. Hysterical.